Abstract
The paper presents and discusses findings from a recent empirical study involving 40 Turkish children aged between 4 and 6 years attending two kindergartens in Berlin in the districts of Wedding and Neukölln. They were tested for their knowledge and comprehension of different grammatical categories in Turkish. Children from Wedding were found to be much better in their knowledge of the grammatical categories in their mother tongue. The differences are statistically significant F (1, 32) = 6. 6258, p = 0. 01488 (p< 0.05). The children from the kindergarten in Neukölln demonstrated lower results in Turkish grammar comprehension and thus their achieved literacy in L1.
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Highlights
In this paper we focus on the mother-tongue and its importance for acquisition and learning additional languages, especially the official language of the host country
When we compare the results of the children according to the location of the kindergarten, we see that the children from Wedding are much better in their knowledge of the grammatical categories in their mother tongue
What are the factors influencing the children’s knowledge of their mother tongue? All the children in the study come from middle-class families
Summary
Bagdoshvili (2010) says that preschool education is very important for integration of migrant children in Germany, especially for those whose mother tongue is not German and whose parents have no knowledge of German. For such children it appears that kindergarten is the only place where they have possibility to learn German before they enter school, as their parents have no knowledge of German themselves, and without attending kindergartens and without learning the basics of German, migrant children are not able to deal successfully with the school program. The Turkish children live in a multilingual and multicultural environment in Germany, there is no mother-tongue or bilingual program generally available in the pre-school phase. It is not just important to provide a mother tongue education or bilingual learning programs in the kindergarten. Number of years of formal education, if the teaching is in the mother tongue a foreign language
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